Kind words for the man who loved my wife

Words change in their meaning, and if one is not careful, it can lead

to misunderstandings. When I tell people I worked in a bathhouse as a

youth, they give me some very strange looks, but in those days a

bathhouse was simply a place where you changed into a bathing suit

that you had rented.

The same with “swinging.” When I say that back in the ‘60s, Corona

del Mar was quite the swinging place, I do not mean that people were

swapping mates. I am using the word in the earlier sense, as it

derived from music -- to swing, to have the beat -- and I mean that

there was a lot of fun going on.

One of the centers of this fun was a shack perched on the hill

above Bayside Drive where Ernie Cantu resided with Tommy Thompson.

With two bachelors in residence, it was pretty much a nonstop party.

We got invited to a lot of the festivities because Ernie had become a

good friend of ours. That we were older than he by a decade or more

never seemed to matter.

I met him at Little Corona, where he soon became the ringmaster of

a never-ending gin game with my wife, Katie. They would sit there by

the hour, playing hand after hand, punctuated by occasional

triumphant cries of “Gin!” followed, if Ernie was victorious, by

Katie’s strongest epithet, “Suzie Rottencrotch!”

Cards weren’t the only thing Katie and Ernie enjoyed. Like my

wife, Ernie was a fabulous dancer. If there was any fly in the

ointment of my marriage, it was my lack of dancing ability. The only

dance I ever really mastered was the Twist, and even then I was told

I looked like Ichabod Crane fleeing from the headless horseman.

But Ernie knew every dance there was, and every party was an

opportunity for he and Katie to show their stuff. I didn’t mind

sitting it out, but it must have been hard on Ernie’s date to watch

him spend all his time dancing with someone else.

The truth is that Ernie was in love with Katie. He was always the

perfect gentleman and never made the slightest move, but if a truck

had run me over, he would have been the first in line to comfort my

widow.

Ernie had nothing but respect for Katie. For him, she was the

epitome of a lady.

I remember one party. Everyone had been drinking, and one young

woman who was in the kitchen decided to take off her sweater and

display herself. The men, as you can imagine, were watching with

interest -- until Katie came in.

Ernie wasn’t about to have Katie exposed to that scene. He pulled

the young woman’s sweater back on, she tried to pull it off, he put

it back on. It was quite a wrestling match, but Ernie prevailed.

One night, the three of us went to Reuben’s for dinner. Katie

loved jokes, and at one point, when Ernie’s attention was drawn

elsewhere, Katie put a peanut in her nose and gestured to me to do

the same.

Of course, we both expected Ernie to turn around immediately and

laugh when he saw us with these peanuts hanging out of our noses, but

Ernie didn’t turn around. There we were, in the middle of Reuben’s,

peanuts dangling from our noses like obscene boogers, and our

audience refused to look at us. The waitress came by, saw us and did

a very good job of not dropping her tray.

I was beginning to fear the peanuts were going to become a

permanent part of our anatomy when, finally, Ernie turned around.

Without missing a beat, he put a peanut in his nose and went on with

his dinner.

It wasn’t gin, but he was definitely the winner.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge.

His column runs Tuesdays.